N.B. It's been brought to my attention that I missed some key points of fact. I'm redacting this post because the spirit behind it is entirely viable and undamaged despite. As I am unable to strikethrough text I am underlining the text that has factual inaccuracies. Please read this OP as such and take from it what you will. This is my attempt to address a mistake while not covering up the mistake.

It's very clear that a disturbing amount of people do not understand the literal words of this announcement or the spirit behind it. There's even a community wishlist entry that demonstrates just how deeply people don't understand the issue.

It's not polite and it's not politically correct to say, but it needs to be said because the people at GOG are getting abused by the lack of understanding. If you don't see this new announcement as anything other than a wholly positive, yet difficult decision for GOG to come to then you are a remarkable idiot.

GOG is in no way suspending their stance on regional pricing. They don't like it for all of the same reasons as those who suffer because of it and, perhaps most of all, because it's simply not fair to regionally price goods that are digital and shipped digitally. All of the games that are priced in accordance with GOG's flat pricing are going to stay that way and it was in no way inferred that anything other than that would be the case. GOG made the difficult decision to bring specific titles to their customers at the cost of regional pricing for those and only those titles.

The likely synopsis of that conversation was if you want to sell our game DRM-free then you have to accept regional pricing for it and we will not budge on the issue. That doesn't at all seem like a stretch of the imagination and it shouldn't. After all, why are much sought after titles from id Software and others not here? In the cases where it isn't a rights issue (e.g. System Shock 2) it's an issue of the money, either the rights holder/publisher won't accept DRM-free sales or GOG and the rights holder/publisher can't agree on a selling price. In order for GOG to do this they must believe that the games truly are worth the understandable frustration, the price gouging of regional pricing that they can't affect other than to opt-out of selling the title.

The questions, then, are two.

First, would someone rather have a much sought after game be available to them DRM-free at the cost of regional pricing when that is the only way to obtain the title or would they rather not have the game? Second, would someone rather lambaste a company that they claim to respect because they refuse to accept the fact that making this difficult decision is not out of step with the company's goals and mission or would they rather think about how this decision may actually fit in with the company's goals and mission because the company has legitimately earned the respect of its customers and community?

GOG isn't the video game messiah and they've made mistakes, but they're not a company that is disrespectful to their customers and community. The people at GOG actually care about video games and they make it clear that the game is what matters, not a slavish devotion to monetisation and pricing. That's what this announcement is about so...Christ, people, demonstrate some real respect for the people that work hard to bring us this wonderful store and service.

As was pointed out to me in another thread these contracts don't last forever, and when it comes time for renegotiation of titles that are already here today, the door is now open for regional pricing to be written into the renewal contracts for those games.

So I figured, "Yeah, but maybe some of the publishers will stick with the one-price scheme, anyway." Then I went to www.steamprices.com, where you can see some of the various region prices, and plugged in about 20 titles from my game shelf, and also some indies I don't have. Of those I checked, every one of them had a different regional price on Steam. The variation was everywhere from 0% (that title had a higher price in another region) up to 50%; I couldn't find any rhyme or reason to the percentages but maybe there's a pattern.

I don't want to say that this is a sign of things to come, but... well, the evidence of pricing on the other site shows that this may very well be the future for many - or all - of the titles here.

Nice post TheBitterness:)
You are braver than I am!

I retain my hope that GOG will live up to the main ideal behind their site, even if I'm mainly here for classic games first and DRM free second.

Interesting how some of the indies have regional pricing. Guess indie devs can be a bit greedy and not give a **** about end customers either?. (ie Rust)

Calling anyone who disagrees with you a "remarkable idiot" is remarkably rude. Your assertion that those of us who object to GOG's decision "demonstrates just how deeply people don't understand the issue" is deeply patronising. We understand it perfectly well; but you appear unwilling or unable to understand us.

As for the rest of your suggestions, I refer you to what I said in the announcement thread:

This will fatally undermine GOG's unique selling point. The reason GOG was able to become the second-biggest online games vendor in the world is that a large number (a minority, but a significant one) of gamers were so fed up with the unfair practices of its competitors such as Steam, particular DRM and international price discrimination, that they wouldn't buy from them or at least would much rather buy from GOG, and that number was and is growing - slowly, but still growing. By not letting their games be sold here because they insisted upon DRM and/or regional pricing, publishers were missing out on a large amount of money. The way for GOG to get them to release their games on consumer-friendly terms was to hold out, refuse to abandon their principles and wait for more and more publishers to get fed up with not being able to sell their games at all to a large and growing number of gamers, so they decided they'd rather sell them on terms they don't like (i.e. fair, ethical ones) than not at all.

Now GOG has made that much less likely to happen. You know that Regional Rip-Off video, the old "fair price" bit on the site banner, the old news announcement where GOG declares it will have failed if it ever abandons any of its principles including the "one world, one price" policy, and all the other embarrassing reminders that people keep posting in this thread? Well, we, the customers, aren't the only ones to remember all that - publishers do so too. And now they've seen that GOG is willing to abandon at least one of those hitherto inviolable principles. After this decision - even if GOG does attract more publishers and more games by allowing regional pricing - in future, if someone says, "You can sell this game, but only with [some sort of DRM, probably one of the less awful ones like a one-time verification - at least the first time]", and GOG says, "Never - DRM-free and that's not negotiable," do you think the publisher will take them seriously now that they've already given up on one 'core value'? Yes, for the reasons above.

I stopped reading at remarkable idiot. It completely destroyed whatever you wanted to say....

Remarkable.

I'm not going to say 'accept it, this is the internet' or anything else that asinine in an attempt to make what I said acceptable. What I will say is that people with very wrong-directed, often uncritical viewpoints demonstrate remarkable idiocy. It's not polite to say but I see no reason to leave it unsaid. To lambaste GOG over there desire to bring these three as-of-yet unnamed titles at the cost of regional pricing explicitly for these titles, to suggest that they are going against their core values at all let alone to the degree that others have, is sheer idiocy and that's all there is to it.

If you refuse to read someone's considered opinion because they are saying that the knee-jerk, uncritical opinions of others is remarkable idiocy then you need to get a thicker skin and, at the risk of sounding antagonistic, sharpen your mind. This is all I'll say in respect to comments like this because I don't want to derail the point of this thread. It's necessary to engage once but not more than that. Thank you for supporting GOG. It seems to me that this is the sort of thing that they can't say or even come into this thread to support for PR reasons, but very likely what folks at GOG are thinking. Since there are plenty of people reacting with undue harshness and a wholesale lack of critical thinking, it seemed to me necessary for someone to come out and poke at those people so that those at GOG recognise there is also a body of people who get what they are doing here and express their support.

Chances are that this will devolve into some fuck story or other but it's my hope that the message gets through.

I've not really kept up with all the threads about this so I don't know if its been said already but, as others have noticed, it has been a while since one of the major publishers (EA, UbiSoft, Activision) brought anything here and I wondered if they'd actually ganged up on GOG to force regional pricing through
luckily GOG were in a position to hold out for quite a while with ex-major published games coming from Tommo, Nordic and others but I guess they had to give in eventually, maybe they even agreed to regional pricing as a compromise to other demands the majors were trying to make?

For your question about regional pricing, personally I would prefer an old game to turn up, fully working and with all the add-ons, on Steam or even Origin rather than not turn up at all, as long as they don't eat into GOG's market too much and GOG stays healthy!

Then again if the option are the PC gets shoddy, half broken ports or not at all (as has been the case with Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition) that need community patches, I would choose the shoddy ports while still moaning that the porters should do their jobs properly, obviously, the danger there is that community patches don't appear as was the case with the broken port of True Crime: Streets of LA

I would make a disparaging remark about where you are from, as naturally, this will never affect you so you don't understand the issue at all, but I'm not about to stoop to your level of calling people idiots. But bear this in mind. Everything starts somewhere. It may be one game first (The Witcher 2), then another 3 games now. But soon it'll be every game from new publisher Y. And then all existing games from old publisher X.

We've seen it many a time. Remember when Steam didn't have a single regional restriction? Didn't have any regional pricing? Now look at it. In Steam's case it all began with Ubisoft and Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Same with GreenManGaming. They never used to do regional restrictions or regional pricing. Look at them now. To believe that the three titles announced will be the only titles to ever be regionally priced and that GOG will never drop their worldwide availability stance (especially as they've already clearly stated quite the opposite) would be remarkably naive.

Aren't we going a little overboard here? So they added another game to the Dangerous Dave pack, it's not the end of the world. :O

Wait....are we all talking about the same announcement?

1. The United States is not a good place to be socially or economically for many, so any statement about where I'm from that isn't directed at me on a personal level is entirely acceptable. People in the United States haven't been affected by regional pricing and that seems to me likely to fuel the ridiculous notions of 'exceptionalism' and people caring less about games because that cost less. Steam has demonstrated that price really is a factor in how many fucks people give about gaming in general as well as individual games and we may even be able to argue that a hyper-focus on monetisation has deep roots in what can be considered American Corporativism, all of which is relevant to the conversation at hand in some way.

So, in all honesty, feel free to poke at the people from the US who baldly say regional pricing isn't a big deal. It is a big deal and should be treated as such, just not naively from either side. To be clear, I don't think you are treating the issue naively just not considering strongly enough the weight of what GOG has done and continues to do, viz. the experience of GOG.

2. You aren't incorrect to think that this could look like a legitimate indicator of a change in direction for GOG given the behaviour of other companies. However, we must not unduly lump GOG in with the likes of Valve's Steam, GreenManGaming and other companies simply because of their stance in this particular set of circumstances. At least one other user mentioned the issue of The Witcher 2 in, I think, the announcement thread and we can fairly say that GOG didn't regional pricing across all of their titles because of it. That instance should play some real role in the thinking of people who experienced that and should play some real role in the thinking of those hearing about it.

When it comes down to brass tacks people can either come down on GOG unduly or use their head and look at GOG's track record. GOG has a solid track record of respectable dealings with its customers and community, something that we shouldn't push to the side just because the video game industry is being raped by hyper-monetisation and people who don't have any fucks to give about gaming save for the money it makes them.

GOG isn't perfect and I'm not a fanboy, I just can't abide all of the shit-talking and the lack of clarity that people use when they opine -God knows for most people it isn't an attempt to meaningfully communicate. This is my attempt to firmly put up the other side of the conversation and the one that I think is correct based on experience and observation with both GOG for the past few years and the gaming industry for the past decade and a half.

But, y'know, what's the common factor here? The major publishers!
We should be bashing them for insisting on regional pricing and restrictions, not individual DD stores, I admire GOG for standing up to them for as long as they did, personally!

The ONE and ONLY positive thing in the announcement is that GOG gets couple AAA titles and few more indies that will be fair priced in sale two years after release (70-90% off). Obviously it also mean that I can't buy anything at full price anymore as soon all game prices will increase by 34% or more. Oh well, I suppose I have big enough backlog so I'm able to wait untill game is priced 5$ or less in future.